by Eric Hammel
Before Mike Downs left the 1/1 CP, he asked Mark Gravel if he could write a message to Task Force X-Ray to try to explain the situation around the prison. Gravel agreed. Downs then hooked up with the Marine major who had accompanied the Marine tanks into Hue on January 31, and the major agreed to help him draft the message and to send it out over his signature. The two ironed out the wording and sent a lengthy, detailed, and blunt message via the 1/1 CP. In the message Captain Downs and the major explained that the prison was six blocks from MACV; that the NVA controlled all the streets on the southwest side of Highway 1; that Golf/2/5 and Fox/2/5 had been unable to fight their way a half block southwest of the highway in bloody, day-long attacks; and that no one at 1/1 or MACV even knew if there were any prisoners left in the prison. Shortly after this message was sent, Task Force X-Ray canceled the night attack.
When Mike Downs returned to his CP, he ordered Gunnery Sergeant Ed Van Valkenburgh to stand the troops down for the night. The company gunny was so relieved that he admitted to the company commander, "I don't think I could've gone down that street again, Sir." Downs thought for a moment and replied, "Gunny, the way they wanted us to go tonight would have made the fight we had this afternoon seem like a walk in the sun."
Sometime after Fox/2/5 stood down, Task Force X-Ray once again ordered 1/1 to launch a coordinated attack toward the prison at dawn, seizing intermediate objectives along the way. If the prison could not be taken in one fell swoop, it would be the object of Task Force X-Ray's long-term plan. The fixation of Task Force X-Ray—or perhaps higher headquarters—on relieving the prison ultimately shaped the course of the battle south of the Perfume.
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Chapter 14
The ARVN position inside the Citadel improved dramatically on February 2. While U.S. Marine helicopters were ferrying the 9th ARVN Airborne Battalion directly into the 1st ARVN Division CP compound, the Hoc Bao Company and the 2nd and 7th ARVN Airborne battalions attacked to the southwest and seized Tay Loc Airfield from the 802nd NVA Battalion. As the day went by, the rear echelon of the 4th Battalion, 2nd ARVN Regiment, and a company of the 3rd Battalion, 1st ARVN Regiment, were helilifted into the 1st ARVN Division CP compound. The 1st Battalion, 3rd ARVN Regiment, went into action clearing NVA troops off the northwestern Citadel wall itself.
The effect of the ARVN reinforcements and their multiple attacks was perceptible and profound. It was evident as the day's fighting wore on that the main body of the reinforced 6th NVA Regiment was going to ground inside the Citadel wall, which was honeycombed with bunkers built by the Japanese during World War II, and in the stoutly built and easily defended masonry buildings throughout the Citadel. Brigadier General Ngo Quang Truong sensed that the fight to liberate the Citadel would be long and costly, but he felt in his bones that his troops had the initiative and the upper hand. He believed the 6th NVA Regiment had allowed itself to become entangled in a losing rearguard display that was more of a political gesture than a solid military threat.
In other action involving ARVN units based around Hue, the 4th NVA Regiment finally began moving on the 1st ARVN Engineer Battalion cantonment, south of the city. The engineers hung on through the day, but they considered their situation precarious. The 4th NVA Regiment's 804th NVA Battalion also continued to press in on the encircled 4th Battalion, 3rd ARVN Regiment, east of the city, but the ARVN battalion grimly held out despite a rising toll of dead and wounded.
South of the Perfume, February 2 was largely a day of consolidation. At 0950 'a platoon of Golf/2/5 set out from the M ACV Compound to rescue a handful of U.S. servicemen manning the MACV radio station. This vital communications link, on the northern edge of the cane field east of Highway 1, had not been molested by the NVA. Indeed, it is probable the NVA had not targeted it despite its unmistakable antenna array.
An NVA unit staked out along Highway 1 south of MACV fired several thousand AK-47 rounds and at least a dozen 60mm mortar rounds at the Golf/2/5 platoon. The Marines answered in kind and easily pierced the NVA blocking positions, though three Americans were superficially wounded. The relief force reached the radio station and escorted the technicians back to MACV after the facility was disabled.
From noon on, Captain Chuck Meadows and his two Golf/ 2/5 platoons were involved in a battle royal over possession of the massive main building of Hue University. On the south corner of Highway 1 and Le Loi Street and dominating most of the neighborhood and the nearby riverbank, the huge structure was the first objective assigned to 1/1 in Task Force X-Ray's desired push to the Thua Thien Provincial Prison and the Provincial Administration complex. After crossing Highway 1, Golf/ 2/5 waded directly into intense NVA small-arms fire, intermittent mortar fire, .51-caliber machine-gun fire from the Citadel wall, and even recoilless rifle fire from farther up Le Loi Street. The Marines responded with every weapon they could bring to bear—including 81mm mortars, in use for the first time in Hue. However, though higher headquarters offered to send Marine air to support the attack, Hue remained closed in and no air attacks could be launched. At length, around 1445, Meadows's cut-down infantry company managed to enter the masonry structure, which had two-and-a-half stories and was built around a huge courtyard. The company began a room-by-room clearing operation.
*
Captain Mike Downs's Fox/2/5 spent most of February 2 widening the perimeter around MACV—clearing and securing several ARVN and government buildings that butted against the southeast, northwest, and northeast sides of the MACV Compound.
One of the buildings that the 3rd Platoon of Fox/2/5 had secured was the Hue Directorate of Police. As Lance Corporal Forrest Towe was searching the second floor, he heard a faint noise from over his head. The day before, when he had heard he was going to Hue, Towe had been one ecstatic Marine. Though a dental appointment had caused him to miss the one-day street-fighting course Vietnam-bound Marines at that time received, he was up for "some house-to-house" after seven months of literally beating the bush for an enemy that never stood and fought. Towe still liked tossing live hand grenades through doorways, but only one day after landing in Doc Lao Park he was a little less enamored of stepping into smoke-filled rooms to spray their interiors with his M-16. Combat in a built-up area was proving to be extremely nerve-racking even after a day in which no enemy soldiers had been encountered. So now there was that rustling going on over his head, and it could not be ignored.
Over Towe's head was a hole in the ceiling, and a charred rafter beam lay wedged against the second floor of the police building, through the hole, and into the half-story attic. "What the hell," Towe thought, and he shinnied up the rafter beam. As Towe's head came level with the attic floor, he saw two men standing over a Soviet-pattern RPD light machine gun that was aimed out a calf-high ventilation hole. The two men, who were dressed in civilian clothing, were Vietnamese. When they heard Towe, they turned in unison and held up their hands. "Friend! Friend!" they yelled in unison. "Sure," Towe thought, "Everyone's a friend when you have the drop on him." Next the two men started shouting, "Police! Police! Police!" Towe yelled back, "Get away from the gun," and motioned for them to back away from the RPD. The two were a little slow on the uptake, so Lance Corporal Towe fired a few M-16 rounds into the RPD's receiver assembly. That got the two Vietnamese men moving! It turned out that one of the men had been literally sitting on a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver, which Towe stuck into his belt. By now there was a Marine fire team rummaging through the room below, so Towe called down to warn them that he was sending down a couple of NVA suspects. Then he prodded the men down the rafter beam.
When Lance Corporal Towe's prisoners reached MACV, the two claimed to be policemen and explained away their civilian dress as an attempt to blend into the populace in the event they were captured by the NVA. In due course the identities they claimed were confirmed.
Early in the morning of February 2, 1st Marines arranged to send a five-truck resupply convoy to Hue. Captain Ron Christmas's Hotel/2/5, which had spent t
he night in Phu Bai after being dispatched from Troi Bridge, was designated as the convoy escort. It would ride in seven 6X6 trucks. In addition to his infantry company, Captain Christmas would have at his disposal the two Army M-55 quad. 50 trucks that had gone up to Hue on January 31 and returned to Phu Bai on February 1. Finally, hitching a ride on the ammunition and supply trucks would be two officers and about two dozen Marines from Alpha/1/1 who had been stranded in Quang Tri on January 31 and who had arrived at Phu Bai at first light.
The twelve-truck convoy was supposed to get under way at 1000, but it was delayed indefinitely because of the many reports concerning the enemy's control of the approaches to Hue. Moreover, aerial observers continued to report that the cloud ceiling was too low for air support. The decision was to wait and see if the cloud ceiling lifted.
At 1100, 1st Marines was given direct control of two Marine Ontos from the 1st Tank Battalion and a pair of Army M-42 tracked dual-40mm gun carriers (known as Dusters). Though these potent weapons were added to Captain Christmas's force, the convoy continued to wait for a clearer sky. Finally, at 1417, Christmas received the order to leave Phu Bai.
Corporal Herbert Watkins, a squad leader with Alpha/1/l's 1st Platoon, wasn't sure where Hue was or what he would be facing once he got there. All Watkins had heard was that Alpha/ 1/1 was catching hell in Hue. Watkins was aboard the lead truck with two fellow 1st Platoon squad leaders, Corporal Bill Stubbs and Corporal Richard Pettit, and 1st Lieutenant Donald Perkins, the artillery forward observer assigned to Alpha/1/1. Corporal Watkins was reasonably eager to get up to Hue, but Corporal Stubbs was not eager at all. Stubbs had only a few days left to serve in Vietnam, and he was understandably unhappy to be going into a big battle. But the company first sergeant, who was remaining in Phu Bai to help run the rear CP, said everyone had to go, including Corporal Stubbs.
Corporal Bob Meadows, a Hotel/2/5 squad leader, had received the word that there were "a few snipers loose" in Hue and that his platoon was going up there to clear them out. Meadows had gotten into a conversation with the Army sergeant in command of the dual-40mm Dusters, and the sergeant had said that he had heard on his tactical radio that most of Hue was in NVA hands. Corporal Meadows didn't know what to think.
When Captain Ron Christmas had received the order to mount out to Hue, he hadn't known much more about the situation there than Corporal Meadows and Corporal Watkins, and he had known very little about conditions along Highway 1. Fortunately, the morning delay had afforded Christmas an opportunity to pick up some information. Though he somehow missed connecting with Lieutenant Bill Rogers of Golf/2/5, he did speak with several wounded Fox/2/5 and Golf/2/5 Marines who were passing through Phu Bai. From them he learned that any convoy going up Highway 1 might come under fire from NVA or VC units, and Christmas decided to act on the assumption that he and his Marines would be facing a running fight. Extra ammunition was issued to all hands, and every Marine was ordered to face outboard, ready to fire at any structure or position from which enemy soldiers fired at the convoy. Also, the Alpha/1/1 Marines, who were interspersed among the supply trucks, were loaded for bear. They each carried 400 or 500 rounds for an M-16, all the grenades they could manage, and three or four M-72 LAAW rockets. Corporal Herbert Watkins had twenty-one magazines for his M-16, plus three or four bandoleers of 5.56mm ammunition.
As the long delay continued, Captain Christmas formulated a concrete plan for dealing with ambushes. Doing so was typical of this twenty-seven-year-old professional officer. A picture-perfect Marine who had served at Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C., before assignment to Vietnam, Ron Christmas was deservedly known as a comer—a young officer marked by his superiors early in his career for eventual high command. Christmas's response to the troubling information he heard from men who had been to Hue and back was an immediate-action plan: If the convoy was fired on, it was to try to run the gauntlet while everyone returned the fire; if a vehicle was disabled, the vehicles ahead and behind would stop just long enough to pick up the men from the damaged vehicle, which was to be abandoned. If the convoy was stopped altogether by an obstruction or blown bridge, everyone was to disembark, form a perimeter, and attack and clear any enemy positions. As soon as the plan was promulgated, Christmas used the remainder of the delay to rehearse everyone for the various eventualities.
Just before the convoy got rolling, Corporal Herbert Watkins looked around at the faces of the Marines in the trucks. Everyone looked anxious.
The trucks started rolling, and all hands locked and loaded their weapons. As the lead truck rolled through the gate onto Highway 1, Marines by the road called, "Give 'em hell."
A short distance up Highway 1, the convoy passed an ARVN cantonment on the right side of the road. Many of the ARVN soldiers were standing behind an immense barbed-wire fence, watching the convoy go by. To Corporal Watkins, they looked like "a bunch of chickens in a henhouse, just staring at the trucks." It didn't seem right that they were there and Watkins was heading toward Hue.
Soon, the trucks were passing blown-up buildings in the string of roadside villages north of Phu Bai. The people were back. Many of the villagers were standing in the doorways of their ruined homes, sullenly watching the convoy pass along the highway.
Several kilometers along Highway 1, the convoy crossed a small bridge. There were signs that someone had tried and failed to drop the structure into the creek it spanned. Just beyond the bridge, at the spot where the main body of Alpha/1/1 had met the Marine tanks on January 31—only two days ago—the convoy stopped briefly beside the destroyed ARVN M-41 tank. The charred crewman was still leaning out of the turret hatch. A sniper plinked a few rounds out at the convoy, but the trucks got rolling again. No one was hit, and the vehicles quickly outran the gunfire.
The convoy entered the built-up area south of the Phu Cam Canal, sped across the An Cuu Bridge, passed the traffic circle, and rolled most of the way across the cane-field causeway without taking serious fire. As it neared the southeastern edge of the built-up area, only 320 meters from MACV, Corporal Bob Meadows felt the pressure lift from his shoulders. A superb bush Marine, Meadows instinctively equated cities with safety. He had been sure the convoy was going to get hit as it crossed the cane field, but that had not happened; Meadows was starting to feel at ease. That was when NVA soldiers, in the houses and beyond the treeline, unleashed a withering fire on the convoy.
In compliance with Captain Christmas's orders, the lead truck barreled off the causeway and straight up the highway, between a long row of two- and three-story buildings. Marines in all the trucks fired into the masonry structures, which loomed over their heads all along the highway. Corporal Meadows saw an NVA machine gun firing from the roof of a gas station and ordered the men in his truck to fire at it. At that moment, one of the Army Dusters started up the right side of the column from the rear, forcing the truck drivers to pull to the left. The farther up the street the trucks penetrated, the more intense the enemy fire became. NVA soldiers were hanging out of the windows, firing down on the trucks. Glancing ahead from his place in the second truck in the column, Corporal Meadows saw a huge pillar of smoke and debris rise from the roadway. Apparently, NVA sappers had set off a command-detonated mine. Fortunately, the detonation was premature; the lead truck was still short of the explosion.
In the lead truck, Corporal Herbert Watkins missed seeing or hearing the mine detonation. He had climbed up on top of the ammo boxes and was lying on his back, firing his M-16 up at the NVA. His attention was totally focused on the AK-47 bursts that were chewing up the ammo boxes beneath him. The next thing Watkins knew, he was flying through the air. As he landed in a large crater, he thought the truck had hit a mine. However, the crater had been there already when the panicky driver had plowed right into it at top speed. Watkins crawled over to the truck and saw that Lieutenant Donald Perkins, the forward observer, was pinned in the crater. The truck's rear wheel was on his chest. Watkins told the lieutenant that everything w
ould be all right, but the corporal knew better. Perkins's chest was crushed, and there was no way to extricate him short of driving or towing the truck out of the crater.
The truck driver was long gone. As soon as the vehicle had stopped, he had run for it. Under heavy fire, Corporal Richard Pettit ran around to the driver's side, hopped in, and tried to move the truck. No luck; it wouldn't move. Corporal Watkins and Corporal Bill Stubbs stayed with Lieutenant Perkins, firing back at the NVA in the houses across from them. At length, since the truck was not moving, Watkins got up on the running board on the protected passenger's side of the cab and told Pettit that the truck was just sinking deeper into the crater. Pettit climbed out through the passenger's door just as a burst of gunfire engulfed the driver's side.
While Corporal Pettit had been trying to move the truck, Marines in the trucks to the rear reacted as they had rehearsed. Hotel/2/5 hurtled from its vehicles and set up a base of fire, suppressing by gunfire every NVA position it was possible to reach.
The moment the convoy halted, Corporal Bob Meadows had led his squad off the second truck and started advancing up the right side of the street, which seemed to be taking less fire than the left side. The Duster that had been trying to pass Meadows's truck when the mine detonated had squeezed past that truck and advanced beyond the lead truck. As Meadows and his squad followed the Duster, the Army antiaircraft gunners had all but taken down a three-story building. On the way past the crater, Corporal Meadows had glanced in and saw Lieutenant Perkins. The rear wheel of the truck was on the officer's chest, and only his head and one arm were showing. In spite of himself, Meadows thought, "You're a dead man."
